Rhizome and the New Museum are pleased to present "Art, Play, and Community," which will celebrate the release of Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito's At the Edge of Art and Alex Galloway's Gaming. Both ground-breaking books explore new media art as an expanded field, that interacts and enliven disciples from design to art to video games to science.

According to At the Edge of Art by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, art's recent eruption in fields as diverse as artificial life, computer games, and community activism reveals a seismic shift in the role it plays in society. No longer content to sit on a pedestal or auction block, these works infiltrate stock markets, sway court cases, and network bedrooms. Alex Galloway's Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture takes an in-depth look at one of these 'edges' to probe the cultural history and activity of videogames, laying the foundation for critique that recognizes their distinct mechanisms and politics.

A brief dialogue between the authors will touch on such questions as the place of art in larger society, the history of community design as an artistic practice, and the role of games in digital culture. The conversation will be followed by refreshments and a reception for the authors.

Participants:

Joline Blais is Assistant Professor of New Media at UMaine and co-founder of Still Water for network art and culture. She previously directed Digital Media Studies at NY Polytechnic University and launched media studies in SCPS at New York University. Blais' research and creative work explores indigenous media, sustainable communities and new narrative forms.

Alex Galloway is an artist, computer programmer, and Assistant Professor of Media Ecology at New York University whose work explores such technologies as network protocols and computer gaming. As the founding member of the Radical Software Group (RSG), Galloway created the data surveillance system Carnivore, which was awarded a Golden Nica at Ars Electronica 2002. Galloway's first book, PROTOCOL, or, How Control Exists After Decentralization, was published in 2003 by The MIT Press.

Jon Ippolito is an artist, former Guggenheim curator, and co-founder of Still Water for network art and culture at the University of Maine. His current projects--including the Variable Media Network, the Open Art Network, and Interarchive--aim to expand the art world beyond its traditional preoccupations.